Thanks man! You're correct, the lighting designer website is what makes it all happen. I've got one process working now, and a second underway.

The first process is to design the lighting patterns as an image in Photoshop, where each line of pixels is one frame of animation, and each individual pixel represents one LED. That's what I've been doing so far. Then to sync it with music I just figured out the BPM of the song, and then figured out how many frames corresponded to each beat. I got it to match really closely, but it still drifts a bit over time. To really get it perfect I expect I'd have to get the light show as close as possible, and then stretch the song to exactly match it.

The second process that I'm developing is a bit more complex, but should produce some really impressive results if you know how to do some video editing.

I'm going to have that website online really soon - I'm working on it right now actually, but I'm a day or two behind schedule at the moment. I'll update here when everything's running, and hopefully someone can test things out for me and give me some feedback.

Sounds great!
I'm handy when it comes to video editing, and tinkering around with this kind of stuff in general. Look forward to seeing more, and picking one up --- I'm sure I'll like what I see! Keep me in mind if you need additional people to test this thing out, give you some feedback, etc.

And of course, good luck! I'm sure you'll move a lot of these once word gets out to the masses.

Update

Sorry for the long hiatus! Things have been happening, though slower than I would have liked.

Website is running now. It definitely still needs two things: debugging and more hand-holding for users. It's a fairly complicated system, and it works for ME because I understand it in and out, but I'm pretty certain there needs to be some tutorials or step-by-step directions. I've put together some infographics, do they make any sense?

The website works well in Chrome, less well in Firefox, and not at all in IE. And there are known bugs that I'm working on. It's definitely my goal to have it polished and "idiot-proof" ASAP.

If you'd like to test out the website, I'd really appreciate your feedback. You don't have to own a light set to sign up and start creating designs; and the website has a graphic simulator so you can actually see what your end-result will look like. If anyone really goes overboard with the designs, I'd probably be willing to send one or two people a set of lights for free!

Excellent work Andy. I read on your web site that you are a computer engineering student. Keep up the good work. This kind of project should open doors for you once you graduate because it shows you can do a lot more than work on a computer. Nice videos and marketing. I hope you can simplify it to reach a broader market. Enjoy the experience.
Dave

I have scoured the web. There are not addressable LED lights, set up RC, for the clueless masses. If you have a workable design for the clueless masses, you will have built a great mousetrap.

I may be the biggest mass of clueless test subject you will find. I got to the step of uploading an image, no problem. Then I clicked on some stuff. Some stuff appeared, but I can't reconcile what the directions say, to what is on my screen.

I agree! I've been looking but haven't really found anything beyond a 3 channel controller. If anyone comes across a really good LED controller please post the link here so we'll see it.

Here's another thread where the guys seem to be noodling through fully programmable LEDs. Looks like a very steep learning curve. If someone develops a user friendly plug n play system, they'd grab this growing market. May be a while yet. As of now, you need to be dual electrical engineering/computer programming major to understand it (at least to my novice eyes).

I just took a look at your link and yeah.... not gonna happen for me. Too complicated. I've been using a 3 channel controller for my night flyers so far. I've seen better controllers than what I'm using but they are no longer made. I get my LED controllers from lowpricerc.com. Here's the link if you're interested: http://www.lowpricerc.com/Glow%20Wir...n-XEN-LED-CTRL. The big drawback for this controller is you can't control the lights by remote control. It comes with an IR remote that's only good for about 30 feet. So you pretty much have to choose a pattern before flight and stay with it. Here's a video of one of the Radians I wired up using this controller.
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